*** I would like to extend a big thanks to my colleagues on the Smarter Industries team for providing all the guest blogs on Smarter Industries at Pulse 2012 ***

Smart Financial Service Industries are creating a customer-focused enterprise and streamlining operations while regulating risk and compliance. At Pulse 2012, learn how to fundamentally and cost-effectively change the economics of IT and speed the delivery of innovative products and services.

Speaker sessions confirmed for Pulse include presentations from CitiBank, Bank of China and Banco do Brasil. At Pulse 2012, you will gain insights in the most critical banking and financial services industry topics, including:

Building an enterprise grade cloud and discussions in application performance management

Pulse 2012 will also feature the latest technology initiatives and next-generation solutions offered by IBM and our business partners, where clients can experience demonstrations addressing important topics for banking and financial service organizations like Lease Accounting for Assets and Facilities, Endpoint Management for Automation & Cloud, Effective Governance for Identity and Access Management and Virtualization Security Solutions.

We look forward to seeing you at Pulse next week! Register Now before online registration closes on Thursday, and save $200 off onsite registration.

The Pulse blog is pleased to present today's guest blog by Danny Sabbah, General Manager of Tivoli Software, IBM Software Group

Pulse 2012 is fast approaching, and this year we’ve evolved the conference to focus more on education, information exchange and interaction – which is what you’ve asked us to do.
Pulse will feature IBM experts and industry leaders across three general sessions and over 400+ breakout sessions across our four streams - 75% of which are lead by your peers! Not to mention plenty of networking opportunities with your peers at the Executive Summit, Business Partner summit, and receptions.

Pulse provides a unique opportunity for you to learn more about the capabilities you need to transform IT economics and speed service delivery, including strategies and actions to help gain value from cloud computing, mobility, security, and smarter physical infrastructures. While on the surface these sound like buzz words, I’m certain that we have the depth and best practices for you to successfully implement these initiatives in your organization and tie them to real business outcomes.

In addition, within the Solution Expo we are introducing an Interoperability Center. We added the Center, based upon your feedback, to demonstrate IBM’s open platform for integrating service delivery across IBM, partner and third-party solutions. The demonstrations will be in the context of real business scenarios, including: cloud, smarter buildings, continuous development, and more.

Pulse is focused on achieving “Business without Limits”, and the curriculum and networking events are designed to provide you with the ideas, actions, and best practices to deliver on the three business imperatives:

Better focus from technology investment on business outcomes

Streamline execution to reduce unnecessary cost and risk

React with speed and agility to shifting competitive landscapes

So on behalf of IBM and our Business Partners, I hope you accept the challenge to attend Pulse and take away actions to drive business impact for your organization. It’s a 3 day education and networking opportunity that you will not want to miss!

The descriptions of our streams and tracks are not yet posted on the website, but you can read about them here, then submit your proposal to any of the following tracks at

http://bit.ly/oaAv2b

Then register for the LIVE#ibmpulse 2012 Webcast 9/28 where you can get all the details on speaking at Pulse, including whether or not you are eligible for a free pass!

Stream 1: Cloud and Smarter, Flexible Infrastructures

Businesses rely on their data center technologies to enable rapid innovation and the agility needed to respond quickly in today's highly competitive environment. Change management, provisioning, monitoring, scheduling and other key IT processes require a robust platform that can deliver services in a variety of ways, including virtualization, cloud computing and other delivery options. This stream will bring together clients, end users, systems integrators, IBM Business Partners and service management experts from across IBM to share best practices, roadmaps, real-world experiences, implementation examples and more.

Track 1: Service Delivery and Process Automation
The ability to quickly transform a business requirement into a business service is fundamental to the success of today's organizations. This track focuses on how IBM Tivoli can help create an effective approach to managing service requests, incidents, change and configuration, and provisioning with an integrated set of IT service management solutions. Submit to this track

Track 2: Service Availability and Performance Management
If you're in operations, you understand the pressure to ensure high service availability and performance. This track will illustrate how IBM solutions provide the visibility and control required to manage critical business services in dynamic conditions in ways that are cost-effective and seamless to clients. Presentations will emphasize best practices and implementations – highlighting the use of common integrations, such as navigation, workflows, visualization and reporting.
Submit to this track

Track 3: Storage Management
IBM offers an extraordinary range of systems, storage, software and services based on decades of innovation -- all designed to maximize and protect information, a critical business asset. This track will explore how storage management solutions can address this challenge through a wide range of presentations that include best practices, implementation stories and case studies.
Submit to this track

Track 4: Collaborative Development and Operations
This track covers collaborative development and operations across the lifecycle in the context of service management, focusing on the principles of ITIL and other IT process methodologies. Key topics will include organizational collaboration, application performance, automated deployment and cloud computing. Ideal for architects, developers, process, and operations managers this track will highlight success stories and panels from clients and industry experts on how organizations can accelerate the delivery of high quality applications and services.
Submit to this track

Track 5: Cloud and New Models for Service Delivery

Cloud computing and new delivery models are transforming the client experience and the economics of service delivery. This track will explore how private and public clouds can be securely harnessed – whether you choose to build your own, leverage prepackaged solutions, or have cloud delivered as a service. Sessions will explore how clients can successfully secure, visualize, and ensure the performance of virtualized and hybrid environments.

Track 1: EAM Best Practices
In this track we will discuss and highlight techniques, processes, activities, and or incentives deemed extremely effective in delivering world-class best practices at your organization. Sessions will highlight quantitative and qualitative ROI and Return on Asset (ROA) data such as equipment uptime, inventory carrying costs, labor utilization, regulatory compliance, and maintenance operations.
Submit to this track

Track 2: EAM Implementation and Upgrades
This track will feature customers sharing their implementation or upgrade stories from legacy versions to the latest release including planning, tools and tasks involved, post implementation/upgrade review, and the improvements they have leveraged in architecture, functionality, security, and scalability.
Submit to this track

Track 3: EAM Extended Usage
Sessions in this track are designed to showcase the value of Maximo and TRIRIGA through their functional add-ons. Areas of interest for Maximo may include mobile, scheduling, linear, spatial, asset configuration manager, service provider, service request manager, and HS&E. Areas of interest for TRIRIGA may include request central, workplace reservation manager, strategic facility planning, viewer, application builder, and mobile to name a few.
Submit to this track

Track 4: EAM Technical Sessions
These technical sessions are designed to be co-presented by an IBM subject matter expert and a client or group of users in a panel setting. Areas of interest may include: workflow, reporting, migration, monitoring, archiving, and integration. Clients submitting an abstract will be mapped with the appropriate subject matter expert.
Submit to this track

Track 5: Maximo Utility Working Group (MUWG)
IBM is pleased to announce that the Maximo Utility Working Group (MUWG) agenda will focus on electric, gas, water and wastewater presentations and incorporate the new Maximo Supply Chain Users Group presentations. Waves of change brought by deregulation, globalization and new regulatory requirements have brought new challenges. Share your story on how you are leveraging Maximo to address these issues and other key challenges at your plant.
Submit to this track

Track 6: EAM Industry Case Studies
In this track we would like to hear from a multitude of industries: Energy, Manufacturing, Transportation, Chemicals & Petroleum, Mining, Life Sciences, Telecom, Facilities, Finance, and Public Sector – including State, Local, and Federal Government users, to highlight how you have addressed your industry- specific challenges with TRIRIGA and IBM Maximo Asset Management, more specifically by using one of Maximo’s industry solutions.
Submit to this track

Track 7: Smarter Buildings
This track features IBM solutions for Smarter Buildings that allow building owners and managers to analyze and optimize real estate and facilities operations. IBM solutions for Smarter Buildings help customers create energy, operationally and space efficient buildings and helps them do so in a sustainable manner.
Submit to this track

Track 8: Smarter Cities
This track features IBM Smarter Cities solutions that allow customers to synchronize and analyze efforts among sectors and agencies as they happen, giving decision makers consolidated information that helps them anticipate—rather than just react to—problems so they can manage growth and development in a sustainable way.
Submit to this track

The boundaries of today’s business infrastructures are being extended and sometimes obliterated by the emergence of cloud, mobility, social business, big data and more. Where does your business ecosystem start and end? Whom do you trust and whom do you not? We’ll address these key security and compliance challenges in this track, demonstrating how IBM’s security intelligence solutions can become the enabler of a business without limits.

Track 1: Securing Emerging Technologies
Embracing new technologies, such as virtualization, cloud, and mobile computing, is an important aspect of how organizations stay competitive. However, the same technologies that can accelerate efficiencies can also pose new security challenges. This track will highlight how IBM can help you stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape and at the same time leverage the innovations made possible by emerging technology.
Submit to this track

Track 2: Securing the Infrastructure and Mitigating Threats
A secure infrastructure is not a static infrastructure. Every day, organizations have to face new security challenges, and the most successful organizations will be the ones that can not only react to these new challenges, but also anticipate them. In this track, we’ll review some of the latest threat research and provide insights on how you can mitigate those threats, and optimize your infrastructure at the same time.
Submit to this track

Track 3: Managing Compliance and Audit for a Secure Organization
Regulatory and industry requirements—which are often disconnected or even contradictory—are increasing, making it difficult for enterprises to keep up without draining valuable resources. This track will focus on what it means to effectively manage compliance and audit in a world where the only constant, is constant change. Sessions will feature best practices and user experiences with designing, enforcing and monitoring security policies for users and their activities, information, systems and processes.
Submit to this track

Stream 4: Leveraging Mobility

This track will explore how mobility is playing an increasing role across the enterprise. From standard voice and data services to business critical applications, mobility technologies are becoming critical to business operations. This stream will explore challenges around delivering and managing wireless mobility technologies, highlighting how visibility, control and automation play a vital role in the deployment and adoption of new services.

Track 1: Service Assurance for Communications Service Providers
This stream will explore how effective network and service assurance enables control of the entire communication and content management infrastructure. It will discuss strategies and methods for gaining greater visibility into how key network and application elements impact service quality and delivery. Sessions will highlight best practices and client experiences across service quality management, event and performance management and other OSS/BSS functions.
Submit to this track

Track 2: Cloud Service Providers
Communications service providers (CSPs) around the world are looking for smarter ways of doing business. This track will explore the challenges around the deployment of a cloud services environment. It will feature customers who have expanded their portfolio of offerings to cloud and highlight how CSPs can quickly and cost-effectively create, manage and monetize public and private cloud services.
Submit to this track

Track 3: Mobility and Endpoint Management
This stream will explore how mobility is playing an increasing role across the enterprise – spanning the broad array of mobile devices, endpoints and networks that support enterprise mobility. From hot topics such as endpoint management and security and mobility technologies from Lotus, this track will cover how progressive companies are leveraging technology to enable companies to conduct business in entirely new ways.
Submit to this track

Submit your proposal a line with any of the above tracks at http://bit.ly/oaAv2b

Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know that Pulse 2012 Call for Speakers will open next Monday on September 19. I wanted to give you a heads up to get your ideas flowing and submit your session proposal as soon as you're ready, which you can do at ibm.com/pulse

Also, mark your calendar for the live Q&A webcast on September 28 where you can ask the IBM subject matter experts anything you want to know about presenting at Pulse. Follow @IBMPulsefor details about the webcast and other Pulse updates.

Here is a sneak peek at the Pulse 2012 includes the five major streams, and their respective tracks:

Cloud and Smarter Flexible Infrastructures
These sessions will explore keys to innovation with agility
with a robust service delivery platform that includes change management,
provisioning, monitoring, scheduling, virtualization, cloud computing
and more.

These sessions will address key security and compliance
challenges and demonstrating how IBM security intelligence solutions can
enable secure business amidst the emergence of cloud, mobility, social
business, and big data.

Securing Emerging Technologies

Securing the Infrastructure and Mitigating Threats

Managing Compliance and Audit for a Secure Organization

Managing Mobility
These sessions will explore the expanding role of mobile technologies
across the enterprise, and the vital role of visibility, control and
automation in the deployment and adoption of new services.

Service Assurance for Communications Service Providers

Cloud Service Providers

Mobility and Endpoint Management

Clients and Business Partners selected to deliver a Pulse education
session may be eligible for a complimentary full conference pass valued
at USD $1,995. After legal review of applicable laws, IBM will determine
eligibility for a complimentary pass on an individual basis. Conference
registration includes meals, education sessions, EXPO Solution Center,
and networking events Sunday evening through Wednesday. Travel and
living expenses are not included and will not be reimbursed. The
complimentary pass for delivering an education session at Pulse is
limited to one client or Business Partner per company per session. IBM
will inform individuals of eligible status and provide any additional
required documentation. IBMers are not eligible for a free pass to
Pulse for presenting a session.

And here's a video I think you'll like if you are concerned about things we will address at Pulse.

Special focus will be given to best practices, implementation and upgrades.

We’ll also be taking a deep look into how Maximo’s industry specific functionality is addressing the needs of a multitude of markets. The track will also be composed of a series of functional and technical sessions blanketing everything from mobile to scheduling to service provider.

Asset Management Best Practices
What is your maintenance management strategy for production, facilities, and transportation assets? In this track we are looking for certain techniques, processes, activities, and or incentives deemed to be extremely effective/efficient in delivering world-class maintenance at your plant or facility. Presentations should highlight quantitative and qualitative ROI and Return on Asset (ROA) data such as equipment uptime, inventory carrying costs, labor utilization, and regulatory compliance. Other areas may include training, application consolidation, integration to condition monitoring, and organizational structure and function distribution.

Implementation/Upgrades
In this track we are looking for IBM Maximo Asset Management version 7 customers to share their implementation or upgrade story from legacy versions. We are particularly interested in hearing about the planning, tools and tasks involved, post implementation/upgrade review, and the improvements you have leveraged in architecture, functionality, security, and scalability.

Introducing IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.5
This track showcases the new functionality that will be delivered in IBM Maximo Asset Management version 7.5. We are specifically looking to secure clients that have served as development partners and wish to share their experiences and input in shaping this release via agile methodologies. Presentations and discussions on collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project are welcomed as well as discussions on how rapid delivery and high quality software aligns with your end-user needs and your company’s business objectives. These sessions may be teamed with IBM Maximo Asset Management development staff and or be in a panel format.

Maximo Technical Sessions
The technical sessions are designed to be co-presented by an IBM Maximo subject matter expert and a Maximo client or group of users on a panel to provide a dual perspective: learning and training from the Maximo presenter, and real-world experiences from the client. Areas of interest may include: workflow, reporting, migration, monitoring, archiving, and integration. Clients submitting an abstract will be mapped with the appropriate subject matter expert.

Maximo Utility Working Group (MUWG)
IBM is pleased to announce that the Maximo Utility Working Group (MUWG) will once again be integrated into the Pulse curriculum. Celebrating its 13th year, the MUWG agenda will focus on electric, gas, water and wastewater presentations and incorporate the new Maximo Supply Chain Users Group presentations. Waves of change brought by deregulation, globalization, restructuring, increasing competition, and new environmental/regulatory requirements have brought new challenges to this industry and put business operations at center stage.

Asset Management for Your Industry
Asset management in a smarter planet continues to drive the need for significant breadth and depth of capabilities for various industries. In this track we would like to hear from a multitude of industries: Energy, Manufacturing, Transportation, Chemicals & Petroleum, Mining, Life Sciences, Telecom, Finance, and Public Sector – including State, Local, and Federal Government users, to highlight how you have addressed your industry specific challenges with IBM Maximo Asset Management. We are particularly interested on new possibilities to bring together business and IT assets and identifying how you can reduce costs, lower risks and improve service.

Smarter Buildings
In this track we are looking to highlight how you are using asset management to make your building or facility smarter in a reliable, cost effective, and greener/sustainable manner. This may be in the form of managing space usage and occupancy, increasing energy efficiency, and providing reliable operations and improved maintenance. We are particularly interested in hearing how you are using IBM Maximo for Space Management, Maximo for Data Center Infrastructure Management, IBM Maximo Asset Management, Maximo for Energy Optimization, and Maximo for Service Providers.

IBM is proud to announce that Michael Phelps will address the audience at Pulse 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.

On August 16, 2008 Michael Phelps etched his name in Olympic history by winning his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Olympic Games, surpassing Mark Spitz for the most gold medals in a single Olympics. Seven of his eight wins set new world records, and with the addition of his six gold medals from the 2004 Olympics, Phelps has now won the most Olympic gold medals in history.

Phelps has been making waves in the world of sports since he was young. He tied the record for the most medals at a single Olympics in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic Games when he earned six gold medals and eight medals overall. Already a sports legend at the age of 22, he has been named World Swimmer of the Year for three out of the last four years (2003, 2004, and 2006).

Although he is young, he has already had a lifetime of experiences—in the pool and out. He founded “Swim with the Stars”—the first ever Olympic Swimming Tour that travels the country to give kids the opportunity to learn from the best. He is also a national spokesperson for the Boys & Girls Clubs.

Phelps is the illustration of dedication and passion, practicing 365 days a year. His results speak for themselves.

You know who you are. You are always the first in line for everything. And it pays off. Or at least it usually does. I don’t know if you ever got that iPhone but I know you saved $600 on Pulse 2008 registration. And even though Pulse 2009 registration won’t open until later this month, I bet you’ll be the first to get your sneak peek at what we’ll be showcasing at the conference February 8-12.

How’s that, you say? With the new IBM Service Management Jams FREE weekly live webcast events. Each ISM Jam offers a glimpse into the strategy and technology you’ve come to expect at Pulse, including the latest in thought leadership, solution deep dives and real-world experiences from those of you that manage IT, service delivery and operational infrastructures of every kind – across every major industry. Bring your questions and come prepared for a lively discussion because each of the ISM Jams are hosted by IBM Service Management experts and include 30 minutes of live Q&A.

So stay tuned for Pulse Early Bird Registration and jump-start your Pulse experience in 2009 with the ISM Jams each Tuesday at 12:00 p.m. ET.